Monday, January 09, 2012

Obama Grasps At Employment Straws

By rights, "The Discouraged American Worker" should be Time magazine's "Person of the Year". During the first three years of Obama's presidency, the labor force fell by 0.7 million. In contrast, it rose by 3.5 million during the first three years of Bush 43's presidency, when America was also recovering from a recession. The labor force rose by 5.9 million during the first three years of Bush's second term.

December marked the 30th month of Obama's economic recovery. During this time, the reported unemployment rate fell from 9.5% to 8.5%. However, this "improvement" was entirely an artifact of workers giving up and dropping out of the labor force. In fact, if labor force participation had remained constant at the 67.5% level that obtained at the end of the recession (June 2009), December's unemployment rate would have been reported at 10.9%.

During Obama's recovery to date, total employment has increased by 787,000. In contrast, during the first 30 months of the Reagan economic recovery (which started in December 1982) total employment increased by 8.9 million jobs. At this point, in percentage terms, Obama is 12.1 million jobs short of matching Reagan's jobs creation performance. This provides a stark contrast between Reaganomics and Obamunism.

No comments:

"Reform has a tendency to put all but the biggest temperaments in a cocksure intellectual attitude -and that attitude puts one terribly out of harmony with the great underlying life forces. The gods take their revenge on the cocksure.